Reason Rally

Jah Seig, I wonder if you'd be able to tell that to Copernicus and Galileo with that same straight face.

Look at the advances in Human awareness and technology after they took the latin out of Christianity and regular people were able to read the "Magic Book"

... when they weren't being threatened with excommunication, burnt at the stake, or just flat out killed... all in the name of the "Religion of Peace and Love"

"Holy" Texts, as Skoop says, are useful for learning about the societal and cultural history of the people responsible for producing them. Otherwise, for the most part, they have been used selectively and subjectively out of context for the last 2000-odd years for the sole purpose of control, intimidation and tribalistic elitism (albeit voluntary tribalism).

If you are looking for wisdom, I think the Golden Rule seems to have done pretty well independently of (and in some cases despite of) the more widespread and typically Abrahamic religions.

And I think the biggest problem with your reasoning of things is exemplified in your "paraphrase"

Jah Seig wrote:

I think the big mistake lay atheism makes is the insistence that (if I may paraphrase) the world is older than 6000 years so that proves you should disrespect your parents, steal, kill and covet your neighbours wife.

I don't think you understand how society works, and especially have no understanding of atheism, lay or otherwise if this is the conclusion you reach.

Do you feel the same way about Leprechauns? How about Russell's celestial teapot or Sagan's invisible dragon in your garage? You routinely "rush to judgment" on unsupported and unfalsifiable claims. God is only different because it's a culturally significant claim, and that's due to humanity's long history of superstition.

Likewise your echo chamber leaves me grasping for motivation to even bother. But I'll give it a go. Where is the centuries of experience that goes into any real religion (as opposed to a cult) that give a teapot or a dragon, that you could not even think up for yourself, a system of beilief that people will routinely turn to as a just and equitable mechanism for resolving disputes? Come back?

Wait, wait. you think religions are just and equitable mechanisms for resolving disputes?!

So, I challenge you for suspending judgment on the existence of God, specifically. I mention several other equally baseless claims which I assume you have no trouble disbelieving (vs. remaining agnostic). I say the only difference is our long history of theism and the cultural significance of religion. You respond that my propositions don't have a long history and aren't systems of belief ( = culture). And for good measure, you would like the examples I chose to have even shorter histories so would I please make them up myself. Does that about sum it up? I'm going to go ahead and take that as a total capitulation, even if you didn't realize that's what you were doing.

I don't feel obliged to refute an assertion you haven't supported. Please provide a single quotation wherein an atheist says you "should disrespect your parents, steal, kill and covet your neighbours wife." If your definition of "paraphrase" is "to make up out of whole cloth," then no, you may not do it.

Jah Seig, I wonder if you'd be able to tell that to Copernicus and Galileo with that same straight face.

Look at the advances in Human awareness and technology after they took the latin out of Christianity and regular people were able to read the "Magic Book"

... when they weren't being threatened with excommunication, burnt at the stake, or just flat out killed... all in the name of the "Religion of Peace and Love"

Should we be acknowledging that they were being threatened by the likes of sir Isaac? Nah, that was facetious. But Mr Newton was what would pass for a fundie today.

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"Holy" Texts, as Skoop says, are useful for learning about the societal and cultural history of the people responsible for producing them. Otherwise, for the most part, they have been used selectively and subjectively out of context for the last 2000-odd years for the sole purpose of control, intimidation and tribalistic elitism (albeit voluntary tribalism).

The points you make are true, but I would question the ratios you ascribe. Every monkey and his dog has an agenda. And only a fool thinks they wont use any advantage they can get to advance it. In fact, the science of morality (in the thread I started. Where I would rather be discussing this) faces its biggest uphill slog from being overwhelmingly used as a slave to such agendas for so many centuries. But, if you see what I just did to science, the same is what you do to religion. Except I say overwhelming and you say sole. Interestingly, the mysticism that atheism so rejects is the part of religion that least concerns itself with politics and most concerns itself with the well-being of concious creatures.

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If you are looking for wisdom, I think the Golden Rule seems to have done pretty well independently of (and in some cases despite of) the more widespread and typically Abrahamic religions.

I am not cognizant with this golden rule. And as a mark of respect to your reasoning I will ask you to enlighten me, even tho google works just as well on my computer as yours. I could guess. I could google. But you could tell me exactly what you mean and I will address your concerns specifically.

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And I think the biggest problem with your reasoning of things is exemplified in your "paraphrase"

Jah Seig wrote:

I think the big mistake lay atheism makes is the insistence that (if I may paraphrase) the world is older than 6000 years so that proves you should disrespect your parents, steal, kill and covet your neighbours wife.

I don't think you understand how society works, and especially have no understanding of atheism, lay or otherwise if this is the conclusion you reach.

Or maybe you don't understand an example. My point was that so many atheists with a pulpit are happy to suggest that one wrong posit by one religion automatically invalidates, at the very least, that entire religion and quite possibly all other religions as well. I can provide quotes, citations you name it. But, as I have said above, we both know that. So my first instinct is not to bother. If that is not your position, I am not for a moment suggesting it is. And if you want to drag Richard Dawkins et al, kicking and screaming, into a defensible stance, by all means, be my guest. Hell, get them out the comfort zone. There is no way they will shine that same light on science. Not the medicine that used to say that smoking promotes health nor the Eugenics that once said racial purity is beneficial.

Wait, wait. you think religions are just and equitable mechanisms for resolving disputes?!

What I think on this issue really ain't the point. I challenged you to get people on board with the morality of your teapot and you are too chickenshit to even try. Fuck it, any one of your baseless claims will do. Get some trust going in them (even up to judge judy level) and I'll read the rest of your post.

Um, the rest of my post explains why that makes no fucking sense. Rather succinctly, I thought. You should read it!

Also you should probably look up the word "hypothetical." Of course my claims were baseless; that's the whole point! Did you think that Russell invented the teapot to get people believing it existed? ... What in the actual fuck, dude?

Or maybe you don't understand an example. My point was that so many atheists with a pulpit are happy to suggest that one wrong posit by one religion automatically invalidates, at the very least, that entire religion and quite possibly all other religions as well. I can provide quotes, citations you name it.

Please do so, because I see a whole lot of strawmen in that statement.

One situation which could happen if you say it is if, for example, a religion claims that their religion is based off of an infallible text that is divinely inspired. Then, it only takes one wrong posit to invalidate the notion of infallible divine inspiration.

Or, for example, a religion posits a god whose properties necessitate certain conditions. All it takes to 'disprove' that particular god is to disprove one of those certain conditions.

For example, if I posit a god who, by its very nature, would not allow cats to exist in the world. Then, all one has to do is produce a cat and that god is refuted.

Wait, wait. you think religions are just and equitable mechanisms for resolving disputes?!

What I think on this issue really ain't the point. I challenged you to get people on board with the morality of your teapot and you are too chickenshit to even try. Fuck it, any one of your baseless claims will do. Get some trust going in them (even up to judge judy level) and I'll read the rest of your post.

Morality does not come from religion. I behave in a reasonable and constructive way because it is the right thing to do, not because an all powerful, all seeing being will punish me with eternal torment if I don't do it.

Why do you think that atheists are statistically under-represented in the prison population? Christians certainly are not.

Do you feel the same way about Leprechauns? How about Russell's celestial teapot or Sagan's invisible dragon in your garage? You routinely "rush to judgment" on unsupported and unfalsifiable claims. God is only different because it's a culturally significant claim, and that's due to humanity's long history of superstition.

Likewise your echo chamber leaves me grasping for motivation to even bother. But I'll give it a go. Where is the centuries of experience that goes into any real religion (as opposed to a cult) that give a teapot or a dragon, that you could not even think up for yourself, a system of beilief that people will routinely turn to as a just and equitable mechanism for resolving disputes? Come back?

That's pretty flimsy. One, Christianity was one of many cults at the time of the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. It was just the one that had the right DNA for the times. What about the Greek gods Zeus and Apollo, which was a "religion" of it's time? Or the related religions of the Romans before Christianity evolved? Or the countless other "centuries of experience" type religions of the time? What about the Viking and Norse religions that were prevalent before Christianity infected them with their version of a sky daddy? What about the ancient Celts who were always breathing down Rome's neck? Notice I am only talking about the Roman era, I didn't even mention the religions of 3000 BC Egypt or the Babylonians, or the Far East for that matter. Religions come and go, always have. It was humanities' first attempt at science. But now, we have real science, it's working. Christianity, and all of the Abrahamic religions, can trace all of it's myths to bronze age middle east. It was known as the "fertile crescent". But after the last ice age, and also through primitive man's environmental devastation (through excessive farming), the land turned into desert. That's where the "garden of eden" came from. That's where the "apple of knowledge" was eaten. It was nothing but metaphor. When their fertile land disappeared, they blamed knowledge and women (farmers were probably women at the time while the men hunted etc etc) when it dried up and they lost their civilizations and livelihood. So without the knowledge of how and why their land turned to desert, they scapegoat, as most religions and tradition is want to do, and blame something or someone. The flooding were most likely the waters from the last ice age melting, and considering that places in the middle east are very far below sea level (The dead sea surface and shores are 1,388 ft below sea level, Earth's lowest elevation on land), flooding shouldn't be all that surprising. It's so easy to see and understand these concepts now.

To quote Penn Jillette:

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If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.

To those saying morality stems from religion: I guess you didn't watch that link that I posted of Richard Dawkins talking about it did you? It's not hard to think about what he said and come to the realization that what he says is true. After all, you don't believe in stoning women, you don't believe in killing other races, you don't believe in men being rulers over women, you don't believe in slavery, we don't believe in killing people if they fuck farm animals. These beliefs are contrary to what you find in the bible, they are SECULAR. Take a gander at these little tidbits of what is considered morality in the bible.

Exodus 12:29-30:"And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead."

On war and taking of virgins for your personal sex slaves:

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Numbers 31:1-18:"...And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses, and they slew all the males. And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones...And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses...And Moses was angry with the officers of the host And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Ba'laam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the female children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

More on the subject:

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Or how about taking women from conquered lands:

Deuteronomy 21:10-14:"When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the LORD thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife. And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her at all for money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast humbled her."

And killing people who believed in other gods:

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Luke 19:27:"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me."

Or how about women who are raped have to marry their rapists? You know, like what we see in current Islamic countries:

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Deuteronomy 22:28-29If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

How about some more stuff on slavery?

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Exodus 21:20-21"And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money."

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Exodus 21:1-4: "If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself."

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Exodus 21:7: "And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do."

These are but a handful of passages that were considered morale only 500+ years ago in Christianity, and quite a few Muslim societies still consider these relevant today. Only though the Enlightenment and secularism and science and reasoning did we come to the conclusion that these "moralities" are anything but.

But after the last ice age, and also through primitive man's environmental devastation (through excessive farming... The flooding were most likely the waters from the last ice age melting[...]

Snip.

While I generally agree that the Bronze-age understanding of the world was mis-informed, I think you've got your dates a bit off here, which is extremely distracting to me.

Wikipedia wrote:

It is generally accepted that the Holocene started approximately 12,000 years BP (before present day), i.e., around 10,000 BC. The period follows the last glacial period

The Holocene is our current epoch in the Quaternary period.

Wikipedia wrote:

The Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC.

The Neolithic revolution (agriculture) begins well after the ice age. Longer growing seasons and more available fresh water (not trapped in glaciers) is very helpful if you want to grow things. The land between the Tigris and the Euphrates likely would have been more fertile than its surroundings due to being surrounded by fresh water, and presumably these rivers flood from time to time, adding nutrients to the soil. They also invented irrigation systems. Flooding from the melting glaciers at the end of the ice-age could certainly have caused major floods that would end up in stories carried down to Bronze-Age man. I'm studying history, not archeology or geology, so I couldn't tell you.

Maybe I shouldn't have said bronze age. Most of the myths and religions and traditions sprang up during those periods in the middle east and they have evolved and mutated over the ages to better fit the time and regions in which they were adopted later on. I extrapolated the ideas of how these came about after reading Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" which can also be seen in a documentary on google video last time I checked.

And yet now it is facillitating this very conversation. I myself can not think of a single facet of science that makes a better case for keeping ones neck shut until one is in possession of all the facts.

Being wrong isn't inherently bad. The whole point of science is to exclude what can be excluded with the available information, because this is a useful result even if it doesn't explain everything.

But the only reason to demand all information before you do this is if you want to engineer a situation where obviously wrong claims aren't thrown out. Claims that are sufficiently obviously wrong can be disproven with limited information. Not all claims extend themselves sufficiently for us to do this, but the human authors of different religions had no way to know where we would be thousands of years hence so they weren't very careful.

Geological evidence suggested an age of the Earth might be far greater than a few million years, but there was no known energy source that could have kept the Earth's interior hot for that long. This argument persisted for a while. But, an age of thousands of years was untenable pretty much right from the moment people started paying systematic attention to the evidence. Notice how this allows a wide range of theories to be effectively narrowed even with profoundly incomplete information.

Jah Seig wrote:

Megalodon wrote:

Jah Seig wrote:

I think the big mistake lay atheism makes is the insistence that (if I may paraphrase) the world is older than 6000 years so that proves you should disrespect your parents, steal, kill and covet your neighbours wife.

Actually I don't think I've ever seen this except as a straw man, seeking to attribute something to atheism that will make it seem worse than it is.

The qualifier "lay" atheism doesn't get you off the hook here. You're not being honest. I don't think you've got justification to attribute this view to any widely held view of atheism.

Well obviously I got no beef with the atheists that don't believe that. But time and again I see such lame reasoning trotted out by various atheists (some high priests of science among them, if you want to take issue with the L word) in support of divesting ourselves completely of all religious thinking without first checking it for any useful information.

I'm going to have to demand that you start providing attribution for these claims, because I have no interest in defending claims whose sole origin is your desire for something nasty to say about atheists. AFAICT what prominent atheist figures like Dawkins have said is that we should be moral because we have a common interest in a world where people are good to each other. This wisdom isn't discarded, it simply doesn't require a religious justification.

But that's not the problem I'm addressing with your previous post. The problem with your previous post is that there is no widely held view of atheism that rejects morality because the Earth is very old. This appears to be a fabrication on your part, you needed something nasty to say about atheists so you invented it. I'm curious why you're behaving as though that is morally acceptable when you purport to represent morality. Isn't there also something about not bearing false witness against your neighbor? I would have assumed we could agree on that, it makes sense to me. I guess I was wrong.

Jah Seig wrote:

I got plenty more if I could be bothered to type them out.

Not really worth getting into AFAICT. If you had worthwhile criticisms you'd just be doing more science. This avenue is a near tautologically useless tangent.

Jah Seig wrote:

Exactly the point I was making in the first place if you were paying attention. If you are telling me that that is a fundamental part of atheism, I can quote all manner of people who are happy to disagree with you. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are 2 famous folk who spring to mind, but I'm confident that I can find plenty of quotes about superstition being completely worthless within this very thread.

I would welcome quotes from prominent figures so we can put this in context rather than rely on your account.

AFAICT Dawkins' view is that the superstitious component is worthless, because identifying the worthwhile parts requires you to work backwards from an existing morality that you have already arrived at by other means. At best, it's a stopped clock, and provided you have other, working clocks, you can identify when it displays the correct time.

I know of no crime that has not been defended by the church, in one form or other. The church is not a pioneer; it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless.

AKA, evolution, slavery, woman's rights, earth is not the center of the universe, etc.

And another:

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If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.

See my post above with some listings of what is considered moral and just according to the bible.

And Bertrand Russell:

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You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

And Albert Einstein:

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A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

Um, the rest of my post explains why that makes no fucking sense. Rather succinctly, I thought. You should read it!

Also you should probably look up the word "hypothetical." Of course my claims were baseless; that's the whole point! Did you think that Russell invented the teapot to get people believing it existed? ... What in the actual fuck, dude?

Stop the press. Novelist makes shit up. A tiny amount of thought would quickly lead you to the conclusion that it ain't even useful as an analogy, being so easily discompared. Yet it is almost impossible to read a book by an atheist thinker without finding it dutifully trotted out as an axiom of atheist faith.

It proves nothing. The fact that you can make shit up is as dangerous to religion as it is to relativity. (Of course, when I say "you"....)

One situation which could happen if you say it is if, for example, a religion claims that their religion is based off of an infallible text that is divinely inspired. Then, it only takes one wrong posit to invalidate the notion of infallible divine inspiration.

Of course that would be the end of any value that religion could have only if being infallible was the sum total of that religion. Its a huge leap from disproving one aspect of a religion to concluding that such is proof that everything about that religion is completely wrong. Science would not stand up to that non sequiter of a test.

Wait, wait. you think religions are just and equitable mechanisms for resolving disputes?!

What I think on this issue really ain't the point. I challenged you to get people on board with the morality of your teapot and you are too chickenshit to even try. Fuck it, any one of your baseless claims will do. Get some trust going in them (even up to judge judy level) and I'll read the rest of your post.

Sigh, religion via argument ad populum, yeah, we never see that.

How tiresome.

I can't tell if you are being deliberately obtuse, if you are offended because I questioned the sacred one liner or you really can't tell the difference between sitting around making up stupid shit and canons of thought that have served millions of people well for millennia, including some of the greatest thinkers of all time.

Wait, wait. you think religions are just and equitable mechanisms for resolving disputes?!

What I think on this issue really ain't the point. I challenged you to get people on board with the morality of your teapot and you are too chickenshit to even try. Fuck it, any one of your baseless claims will do. Get some trust going in them (even up to judge judy level) and I'll read the rest of your post.

Sigh, religion via argument ad populum, yeah, we never see that.

How tiresome.

I can't tell if you are being deliberately obtuse, if you are offended because I questioned the sacred one liner or you really can't tell the difference between sitting around making up stupid shit and canons of thought that have served millions of people well for millennia, including some of the greatest thinkers of all time.

But none of the above augurs well for meaningful debate.

Of course I can see the difference. However, the fact that the difference means absolutely jack shit about any inherent 'truth' or even relevance to modern life seems to escape you.

Just because you repeat an argument ad populum doesn't make it any less a fallacy than the first time you used it, except now you sprinkled in a little appeal to authority, as if Newton had any access to modern science which actually explains a lot of his contemporary 'unknowns' that were deemed the province of religion.

If you want to actually argue that Einstein was religious in any meaningful way, then you obviously didn't know jack shit about him either. The only reason he rejected the term atheist was because in that day, like today, atheism was widely considered to be 'arrogant'. As if somehow certainty that gods do not exist is more arrogant than certainty that they do.

Just because he was good at physics doesn't mean he was right about everything, he even got some of that wrong.

I see religion as an impediment, a useless obstacle thrown out at mankind to slow down its unabated progression towards a world where ethics would be sufficient for men to discern and live a fruitful life. It (religion) concludes that man is unable to act in a useful manner out of his own volition, and seeing the opportunity, carpe diem!!, it mires humans with a number of superstitions, lies, copycat truisms, and flat out hypocresy to subdue their natural impulse towards a natural world. Religion is a nihilistic virus that forfeits life's enjoyment on earth, on the promise of a fantastic time in the hereafter. Sounds like a poorly written script for a B movie. In fact it is, come to think of it.

You are doing a much better job than most of your co-defenders. But I can't help thinking that you might have missed a few of my overnight posts. If you had read them you would know that I don't have a horse in this race. I'm not here to defend one religion, or any religion, in its entirety. I am not attacking atheism for being wrong. It could very well be right. I'm attacking it for being lazy. Because ostensibly smart, educated people suddenly begin to reason in smilies when the subject of religion comes up. Hence all the people attacking me for a faith I don't and never have professed.

If atheism wants converts, and the millions of keystrokes put into attacking religion in general suggests that it does, it really needs to drag itself out of the comedy business and start to articulate some serious thought. I would love to read some treatise that would stop me in my tracks. But so far all I get is the same tired, self-congratulatory jokes. I get how people love to be told they are better than others, but the atheist literati are doing their cause no favours by pandering to that market. I can get the same smug piety from any baptist. And a lot more humility from many of the mainstream churches.

I'm sorry you put all the effort into demolishing a case I am not defending. I can see how a quick perusal of the thread might lead you to think I was. But there is no point in me going over all of your points and accepting or refuting them one by one. If,OTOH, you know of some book that you think might give me serious pause for thought, I would love to read it. Maybe have a more meaningful discussion once I finish it.

If atheism wants converts, and the millions of keystrokes put into attacking religion in general suggests that it does,

No, it suggests that we want religion to stop damaging society.

If they can do that and stay religious, fine by me.

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it really needs to drag itself out of the comedy business and start to articulate some serious thought.

Really? Any evidence that this is any more persuasive? Any stats you can find would be quite educational to me.

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I would love to read some treatise that would stop me in my tracks. But so far all I get is the same tired, self-congratulatory jokes. I get how people love to be told they are better than others, but the atheist literati are doing their cause no favours by pandering to that market. I can get the same smug piety from any baptist. And a lot more humility from many of the mainstream churches.

Yes, smugness, perhaps the second most popular charge after 'arrogance'. I guess we can just be thankful we're not called uppity.

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I'm sorry you put all the effort into demolishing a case I am not defending. I can see how a quick perusal of the thread might lead you to think I was. But there is no point in me going over all of your points and accepting or refuting them one by one. If,OTOH, you know of some book that you think might give me serious pause for thought, I would love to read it. Maybe have a more meaningful discussion once I finish it.

When refer to incredibly stupid shit like how many people have bought into religion over the years, including some 'great thinkers' like that's supposed to have any sort of relevance to value or truth, then yes, it does appear like you are defending a case. Otherwise, why bring it up in the first place?

Also you should probably look up the word "hypothetical." Of course my claims were baseless; that's the whole point! Did you think that Russell invented the teapot to get people believing it existed? ... What in the actual fuck, dude?

Stop the press. Novelist makes shit up. A tiny amount of thought would quickly lead you to the conclusion that it ain't even useful as an analogy, being so easily discompared. Yet it is almost impossible to read a book by an atheist thinker without finding it dutifully trotted out as an axiom of atheist faith.

You... you really don't understand the teapot argument at all, do you? Humor me, please. What, in your own words, is the axiom represented by Russell's teapot?

I see religion as an impediment, a useless obstacle thrown out at mankind to slow down its unabated progression towards a world where ethics would be sufficient for men to discern and live a fruitful life. It (religion) concludes that man is unable to act in a useful manner out of his own volition,

The atheist era, young though it may still be, has thrown up plenty to suggest that man is indeed incapable of doing exactly that. Individuals can do it. Everybody claims to do it. But somehow it never gets done. Greed and the mindset of the mob put paid to it every time.

Of course we all know this. Sadly, the vast majority of people, of all persuasions, can only see the imposition of their own values on everyone else as a viable solution. And, equally sadly, we all know for a fact, after the failed Bush doctrine, that it ain't gonna happen. No one can project that much power. The more you try, the more power you squander. Now we can either bumble on in our supremacist delusions, all committing atrocities against each other in the name of some greater good, that just happens to suit our pecuniary interests as a side effect. Or we could try to think of some more just way of coming up with a system of shared values that transcends all faiths. Can't say I'm especially sanguine. But for such a thing to evolve, its going to have to take account of a wide range of cultures and the religions they have spawned.

Let's not fuck around. That's a massive undertaking. But it does seem to me the only alternative to a fucked up status quo that nobody is particularly happy with.

I see religion as an impediment, a useless obstacle thrown out at mankind to slow down its unabated progression towards a world where ethics would be sufficient for men to discern and live a fruitful life. It (religion) concludes that man is unable to act in a useful manner out of his own volition,

I would love to read some treatise that would stop me in my tracks. But so far all I get is the same tired, self-congratulatory jokes. I get how people love to be told they are better than others, but the atheist literati are doing their cause no favours by pandering to that market. I can get the same smug piety from any baptist. And a lot more humility from many of the mainstream churches.

Yes, smugness, perhaps the second most popular charge after 'arrogance'. I guess we can just be thankful we're not called uppity.

Address the point, son. Are you aware of any deep or thought provoking literature on the subject or not? And anyway what is all this victimhood about? I'm constantly taken to task for generalising seeing as how all atheists are individual thinkers. (which point I strongly agree with) But if I dare to criticise sloppy thinking by one atheist, then all atheists feel the burning pain in their unique and individual ring-pieces? Its weak, its sloppy and its lazy.

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When refer to incredibly stupid shit like how many people have bought into religion over the years, including some 'great thinkers' like that's supposed to have any sort of relevance to value or truth, then yes, it does appear like you are defending a case. Otherwise, why bring it up in the first place?

Um... I didn't. I responded to someone who did by pointing out the weakness of such an argument. If you are not going to pay attention, I should probably do a Stephen Gould and nancy myself out of the debate.

You... you really don't understand the teapot argument at all, do you? Humor me, please. What, in your own words, is the axiom represented by Russell's teapot?

I understand it. I understand that you understand that I understand it. I understand that you understand the basic flaw in it as a valid proof. And I understand that for you to admit as much would be an admission of defeat for a fair old chunk of your argument.

I would love to read some treatise that would stop me in my tracks. But so far all I get is the same tired, self-congratulatory jokes. I get how people love to be told they are better than others, but the atheist literati are doing their cause no favours by pandering to that market. I can get the same smug piety from any baptist. And a lot more humility from many of the mainstream churches.

Yes, smugness, perhaps the second most popular charge after 'arrogance'. I guess we can just be thankful we're not called uppity.

Address the point, son. Are you aware of any deep or thought provoking literature on the subject or not?

Since thought-provoking is entirely subjective, how could I possibly answer it for you? Especially since you seem to think that things like the number of adherents have some sort of relevance when discussing religious validity.

Are you going to address my challenge to you, and provide any evidence that 'serious thought-provoking literature' has any more power to convert people than, say, just making fun of their religion?

Meanwhile, since you actually offered:

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My point was that so many atheists with a pulpit are happy to suggest that one wrong posit by one religion automatically invalidates, at the very least, that entire religion and quite possibly all other religions as well. I can provide quotes, citations you name it.

Please do so too.

And addressing this other doozy:

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As I said above, all the atheist views on right and wrong came about in my lifetime.

Were you really alive during the lifetime of John Stuart Mill?

While Thomas Paine was likely a deist rather than an atheist, his morality was certainly not derived from religious principles.

See, here's the problem, you write all sorts of stuff that is just flat out idiotic, offer to provide citations, and then then just ignore all requests to actually back up your statements.

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And anyway what is all this victimhood about?

Projecting? I'm not playing a victim, I'm scoffing at the tendency for people to trot out 'arrogance' and 'smugness' anytime an atheist gets up and pontificates about his views. It's lazy thinking on their part done to dismiss that which they can't refute, essentially ad-homing their way out of the situation.

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I'm constantly taken to task for generalising seeing as how all atheists are individual thinkers. (which point I strongly agree with) But if I dare to criticise sloppy thinking by one atheist, then all atheists feel the burning pain in their unique and individual ring-pieces? Its weak, its sloppy and its lazy.

It's not so much that we feel a burning pain from your criticisms, it's that we, or at least I, think your criticisms are weak...at least, you've not presented anything here that hasn't been brought up countless numbers of times and debunked to death.

Your dismissal of the teapot idea is illustrative. You hand-wave away the relevance rather than addressing it head-on. I think we both know why.

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When refer to incredibly stupid shit like how many people have bought into religion over the years, including some 'great thinkers' like that's supposed to have any sort of relevance to value or truth, then yes, it does appear like you are defending a case. Otherwise, why bring it up in the first place?

Um... I didn't. I responded to someone who did by pointing out the weakness of such an argument. If you are not going to pay attention, I should probably do a Stephen Gould and nancy myself out of the debate.

You said this:

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Where is the centuries of experience that goes into any real religion (as opposed to a cult) that give a teapot or a dragon, that you could not even think up for yourself, a system of beilief that people will routinely turn to as a just and equitable mechanism for resolving disputes? Come back?

As if that actually has any real meaning in this discussion.

Ignoring, of course, the fact that dragon deities existed for many centuries in Chinese mythology, perhaps predating even Judaism.

Can you even give a coherent definition of a 'real religion' that differs from 'cult' in any aspect that informs on social value or validity?

And, while you're at it, since you self-identify as an agnostic, would you call yourself an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist?

M8, you are jumping back and forth taking all manner of sentences out of context and screaming at me to justify ideas that I never espoused. I don't know if you really lack the comprehension to follow ideas from one sentence to the next or if you just have problems not winning points of debate. Either way its very circular and very boring to me. So rather than me carrying on being misrepresented, I think you should be the winner. You've gotten yourself way more worked up over this than I ever will, so you must have won an outstanding victory.

You... you really don't understand the teapot argument at all, do you? Humor me, please. What, in your own words, is the axiom represented by Russell's teapot?

I understand it. I understand that you understand that I understand it. I understand that you understand the basic flaw in it as a valid proof. And I understand that for you to admit as much would be an admission of defeat for a fair old chunk of your argument.

Capice?

Why do you have such an aversion to answering very simple questions? You could have summarized it in about as much time as it took you to evade the question.

Here is another simple question. The analogy is an argument, not a proof. What is the basic flaw in it?

This is not a trap. I'm not trying to trick you. Somehow when we talk about Russell's teapot we don't seem to be talking about the same thing. You can take a minute or two to get us on the same page or you can bob and weave. Your move.

I don't believe that you don't think I can get my head around the notion that young Bertie feels that by making up a God that he doesn't believe in, he is making a meaningful critique of belief in any God. My dog understands it. Well not the puppy, but the old dog does. And she can see its shortcomings as an argument as well. The mere fact of being able to invent some fiction says nothing about what is pure fantasy, what is a mistaken belief held in good faith, and what is actually a falsifiable fact. We both know this and we each know that the other knows it as well. If you ask a condescending rhetorical question its a bit much to expect that you wont get a condescending rhetorical reply.

You are willing to suspend judgment on any number of claims that were almost certainly invented by people in the distant past, but you don't suspend judgment on a claim that is, logically, just as likely to be true. It is worth asking why, and your own answer appears to be because lots and lots of people have believed those other things for a very long time. Which is Russell's point precisely. That is exactly why most people believe what they believe and exactly why agnostics won't outright reject religious claims.

All of which ignores the simple fact that you have admitted that you see these ancient claims as almost certainly made up whereas Mr teapot freely admits to being a flight of fantasy. So logically they are not just as likely as each other to be true. And that leaves out the difficulty of of establishing which bits of which ancient texts are made up, and which are descriptions of actual phenomena, poorly described in the available vocabulary of the time. Now many more things are increasingly less likely to be just as true. In fact you quickly get to a point where it is impossible to say what all is factual in the bible without historical knowledge of the actual events. At which point the whole thought experiment breaks down entirely.

I think my interpretation is a kinder one coz it don't rely on any a priori knowledge of the veracity of claims we can only speculate on.

All of which ignores the simple fact that you have admitted that you see these ancient claims as almost certainly made up whereas Mr teapot freely admits to being a flight of fantasy. So logically they are not just as likely as each other to be true.

For Pete's sake, it's a hypothetical situation. Someone -- anyone -- tells you something that they actually believe, but the belief has all the inherent logical/epistemological characteristics of Christianity. You would disbelieve it. That you don't disbelieve Christianity in exactly the same manner is due only to history and the number of its adherents. It's not rocket surgery.